AuthorGus Mitchell

Author Archive: Gus Mitchell

There’s an old writing adage that a good sci-fi writer imagines the car, but the great sci-fi writer imagines the traffic jam. And now that we’re beginning to make science fiction into science reality, we have to start working out how to prevent those traffic jams before they happen. When it comes to self-driving cars […]

The initiative to resurrect the extinct woolly mammoth is, appropriately enough, back in the news again. Its chief campaigner is Harvard professor George Church, and while he has claimed that he and his team are “two years away” from a reborn mammoth since 2014, it’s now increasingly more likely to happen.

Come With Me, and You’ll Be, in a World of Total Automation! You know what my favourite part of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is? It’s not the Everlasting Gobstopper or the ironic punishments doled out upon the rotten children. It’s the reason why the Bucket family is in poverty. Charlie’s father loses his job […]

An Inconvenient Post-Truth When it comes to climate change, politicians and scientists get along like the Titanic and a (rapidly shrinking) iceberg. Climate scientists have historically been ignored or had their findings downplayed by legislators, and now politicians are facing the consequences of downplaying a threat that can’t be debated or easily scapegoated. In a […]

Hydrogen: Now Metal as Fuck Welcome to Super Science Trends! Where we see what’s new in science and prepare you for the technological advances you can expect in the coming years. So when you get out of university and find a robot has taken your job, don’t say we didn’t warn you! As befitting the […]

Ever since intelligence community martyr and recent Twitter user Edward Snowden leaked classified documents from the NSA, we’ve suddenly become aware of the extent to which intelligence agencies can keep tabs on all of our online actions.

In between essays and articles, the two shows I most recently binge-watched were Black Mirror and Mr. Robot. Both shows are about the profound effect that technology has on our lives and our society, and it got me thinking about how much of a love-hate relationship we have with our devices, despite the innumerable benefits […]

I was introduced to a number of biology lecturers, but at the time, they were only known to me by the animal they studied—“the deer guy”, “the rhino guy”, “the tropical fish guy” and so forth, like some zoological Justice League.

Ancient stone tools used by chimpanzees dating back to 4300 years ago have been discovered in West Africa. This has led archaeologists to declare that chimps are officially in their own Stone Age. Anyone else hear the 2001 theme playing? The Chimpanzee Stone Age has been going for quite some time, with chimps handing their […]

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